Ovintiv Inc. (OVV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Ovintiv's 2021 Annual Shareholders Meeting. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that this meeting may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the expressed consent of Ovintiv. I will now turn the shareholders' meeting over to Ovintiv's Chairman, Peter Dea. Please go ahead, Mr. Dea.

Thank you, operator. I am Peter Dea, Chair of Ovintiv's Board of Directors. Thank you for joining us today at our virtual shareholder meeting. We appreciate you making time to join us. Joanne Cox, our corporate Secretary, will lead us through the meeting details. Joanne?

Thank you, Peter. Also on the webcast with us today is Doug Suttles, Ovintiv CEO. Other members of our Board listening in today and being nominated for election are Meg Gentle, Howard Mayson, Lee McIntire, Kate Minyard, Steve Nance, Suzanne Nimocks, Tom Ricks, Brian Shaw and Bruce Waterman. We will conduct the business portion of the meeting first and allow our shareholders to vote on the matters described in our annual proxy statement dated March 12, 2021. The company has appointed [ Christine Amerhein ] to act as inspector of election, and she has taken the Oath to serve in this role. We're also joined by PricewaterhouseCoopers, our independent auditors.

Thank you, Joanne. It is now shortly after 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time, and this meeting is officially called to order. Following the business portion of the meeting, we will use the web portal to conduct a question-and-answer session. Although we may not have time to address every question, we will do our best to provide as many responses as possible. Joanne will now take us through the business of the meeting.

Thank you, Peter. I confirm that we have the Affidavit showing that on March 18, 2021, notice of this meeting and related documents were made available online or mailed to all shareholders as of the record date. This affidavit will be kept with the minutes of the meeting. The shareholder list shows that as of the record date, there were over 261 million shares of common stock entitled to vote at this meeting. We're informed by the inspector of election that over 66% of shares entitled to vote are represented in person or by proxy here today. Based on this report, I confirm there is a quorum. To make our meeting orderly and efficient, we'll first read all the proposals, then we'll give shareholders an opportunity to comment. The online voting is open to you now and will remain open until we announce that voting has closed. The first proposal is the election of directors. Shareholders have been given the ability to vote for or against each individual nominee. The 11 nominees are listed in the proxy statement. The second proposal is to approve the compensation of Ovintiv's named executive officers through a nonbinding advisory vote, commonly referred to as a "say on pay" resolution. The third proposal is the ratification of PricewaterhouseCoopers as auditors for the upcoming year. If any shareholder would like to make a comment regarding any of these proposals, please submit your comment now through the web portal. As there are no comments on the proposals, we will remind shareholders that anyone who hasn't yet voted or wishes to change their vote, may do so by clicking on the voting button on the web portal and following the instructions there. If you have sent in your proxy or previously voted, nothing further needs to be done. We'll now pause for a moment to finalize the voting. [Voting]

Peter, the shareholders have now had the opportunity to vote.

Thank you, Joanne. As everyone has had the opportunity to vote, I now declare the polls closed. Joanne, please read the preliminary voting results for the meeting.

We have been informed by the inspector of election that the preliminary vote report shows that each of the directors nominated have been elected by a vote of more than 82%. The "say on pay" vote has been approved by 76%, and the auditors have been approved by more than 97%. We will publicly report the final voting results shortly after the meeting.

This now concludes the formal business of the meeting. Since there is no further business to be brought forward, I declare this meeting be terminated. I will now turn the meeting over to our CEO, Doug Suttles.

Thank you, Peter. We will now take questions from our shareholders through the web portal. Peter, we have no questions from the shareholders through the web porter. Thank you.

Well, thank you, everyone. This concludes our question-and-answer period. On behalf of the Board, thank you for participating in today's meeting and for your investment in our company.

This concludes today's meeting. Thank you, everyone, for joining us.